A woman was taken to the hospital with a gunshot wound to her leg after police say a vendor at the Eagle Arms Gun Show at the Bloomsburg Fairgrounds accidentally shot her on Saturday.

Police in Columbia County said vendor Geoffrey Hawk, the owner of â€śIn Case of Emergency,â€ť shot Krysta Gearhart of Orangeville in the thigh with a semi-automatic .380 while demonstrating a concealed carry holster. Usually, the demonstration is done with a plastic model of a gun.

There was no magazine in the pistol, but there was a round in the chamber.

I’m guessing that the seller didn’t close the deal.

6 Responses to “Gun Show Vendor Fails To Follow Every Single Gun Safety Rule”

I know this is kind of off topic, but I am getting sick of seeing news reports that have to stick the word “semi-automatic” in the story when it isn’t necessary. Everyone knows that a .380 is semi-auto. The only reason that word is there is because journalists are trying to establish in the public mind that semi-auto is bad.

Actually Krista (her name is misspelled in the article) wanted to go back to the show Sunday to buy the Ruger but her husband wouldn’t take her. From what I understand (Eric Bower who was interviewed in the story is a good friend of mine) he was demoing a DeSantis Pocket Shot, a holster I would never recommend because any holster that doesn’t completely enclose the trigger guard is an accident waiting to happen in my book, and was showing that you didn’t have to remove the gun from the holster to fire it. He claims he had done the same demo many times that day but admitted the gun was on the table and was handled by other people while he was processing paperwork. Still he engaged in plenty of derp to accomplish the shooting, he’s lucky that Krista is happy with him taking care of the medical bills and has no intention of taking things any farther. She has been getting bombarded by the national media but that would likely stop if they actually interviewed her because she’s actually expressing sorrow for the dealer and what he is going through!

When it comes to firearms, there are no accidents barring catastrophic and unforeseeable malfunction.
During all the demo’ing, the firearm in question was not checked each time? Basic handling and safety was avoided or ignored?
The vendor is extremely lucky.
This was no accident. It was an unfortunate, though negligent, discharge that could have been far, far worse.

Firearms are funny like this. You get one, count ‘em, one chance to screw it up. You have to do it right every single time.
That’s why it amazes me when anti-gun people eagerly jump onto the rare times when something goes wrong and hold up such events as proof of the dangers they are so shrill about. It goes right overwhelmingly more often, and that is overlooked by spectators.
Most of the time, it is done right.

“This was no accident. It was an unfortunate, though negligent, discharge”

See where you’re coming from, but that is the definition of an accident isn’t it? Unintentional, unanticipated, results in injury…..

I do agree with what you’re saying though, don’t get me wrong: Handling firearms is serious stuff. Should the vendor have checked for an empty chamber every time he picked it up? Sure he should have.
He didn’t that one time it was loaded and a thankfully mild by comparison accident occurred.

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Started in October of 2002, Alphecca is an occasional blog of OPINIONS by a libertarian, gay gun-nut living in Vermont. Book reviews, politics, gun stuff, other stuff; it’s all here. Your opinions about my opinions are welcome in the comments and as I always say, thank’s for stopping by.